In my group of 6 players two are wizards. Both are level 3 and their class seems to be the most powerful in game. Their spells own monsters with no other classes coming close to the wizards damage. I mean with the ability to use Luck, Spellburn, add their level and int modifiers they are getting 20+ easily to their attack roles...ever time!

Just saying, from my experience, that the wizards are the god class in DCC. Makes it hard to run an adventure with a high risk/reward ratio when they can nuke everything real fast.

Did any of you find the need to tone down the wizards in your game? If so, how?

Before I forget: The two in my group can call their patron more than once per game and often getting 30+ on their rolls! With this happing the adventure climax becomes far less challenging and to me and the other players...boring/upsetting

Magic should come with benefits and perils. Perhaps you could add perils associated to the use of magic in your game.

For example, you seem to suggest that the wizards call on their patron frequently. What patrons are these? Are they like, slaves to the wizards, to be at their beck and call whenever the wizards want their service? Patrons are superpowerful beings, probably with an ego to boot. They view the wizards as mere pawns that they will use and throw away like a used toy when they are done with them. They will crush them like an insect if they are annoyed that they call on them too often.

Also, use of systematically successful magic is likely to attract attention. Unwanted attention. The wizards could hear that their growing power is becoming known and that the more they use it, the more other creatures become jealous or worried about their power. Assassins might be dispatched if the wizards leave traces of their passage through continued use of their magical powers. Ones with resistance to magic...

Finally, on the matter of spellburn and luck... Luck is not renewable for wizards. So normally this should be rare. Spellburn is somewhat renewable, but at a slow rate. Perhaps you could increase the number of encounters per day, i.e. stack your adventuring days with more stuff, to force wizards to consider how to use this depletable resource. Also, consider asking the players for specific spellburn actions. Perhaps a 5-point spellburn means the wizard needs to cut off a finger. Perhaps a 10-point spellburn requires more than that. In other words, perhaps spellburn comes with some permament consequence.

In my group of 6 players two are wizards. Both are level 3 and their class seems to be the most powerful in game. Their spells own monsters with no other classes coming close to the wizards damage. I mean with the ability to use Luck, Spellburn, add their level and int modifiers they are getting 20+ easily to their attack roles...ever time!

Just saying, from my experience, that the wizards are the god class in DCC. Makes it hard to run an adventure with a high risk/reward ratio when they can nuke everything real fast.

Did any of you find the need to tone down the wizards in your game? If so, how?

Before I forget: The two in my group can call their patron more than once per game and often getting 30+ on their rolls! With this happing the adventure climax becomes far less challenging and to me and the other players...boring/upsetting

Are you running the game? Or are you a player?

I've experienced this same thing in my games (Judge or player).

- If they're calling on their patrons twice a day, they should be racking up some hefty favors that need a callback. I run Patrons as the ultimate asshat NPCs, not as a "magic item." If you call on Vendel Re' Yune, you can guarantee to be sent on a quest to find something that he needs to lessen his unending pain. During this quest, you will begin to feel just a smidgen of his unending pain, increasing as the days go by (resulting in penalties to spellcasting, loss of invoke patron completely, and finally incapacitation). The length and difficulty of the quest is commiserate with the level of assistance the old Arm gave you. So, roll a 30+, and it's super awesome...until you have to pay him back for warping the physical laws of the universe at your petty whim.

- Also, whether a wizard has a patron or not, the power that they wield is understood to come from "beyond them." In my game, I take the philosophy that *any* spell that a wizard casts is granted by their patron (or some supernatural being, if the wizard doesn't have a patron). Also, any spell that they learn (initial or subsequent to 1st level) is tied to some powerful being. You could use this to tie the wizard even tighter to the aims of the patron. Also, the uniqueness of every spell becomes a hindrance. What if the wizard has magic missile with some crazy powerful mercurial effect? Someone is going to find out and want that version of the spell for some nefarious purpose.

- Are you fighting goblins and orcs? Or are there real threats between the PCs and whatever their goal is? Adventures in DCC shouldn't be simple dungeon delves inhabited by irascible humanoids. They should be crypts in remote jungles, lost temples under glaciers, a cursed shrine in the alley of a decadent city, a burned out hulk in space, or the body of a dead god in some timeless dimension. So, the difficulty in *getting there* should be real. The guardians should be impassible by anyone without serious skill at arms (warriors), the blessings of their gods (clerics), extreme luck and technical skill (thieves) and the fleeting power of supernatural patrons (wizards). And then they should be barely passable without the PCs innate power and possibly help (like patrons or a magical relic) but with a price. Don't forget wizardly combat! We had our first instance of this in a recent adventure, and it opened my eyes to how that toolbox can be used by the PCs enemies.

- Wizards are weak and get weaker the more they cast spells. Use that as a Judge. If you've poisoned yourself in order to burn Stamina, guess what? You're more susceptible to diseases, curses, poisons, etc (anything with a Fort save). And loss of physical abilities should make it more difficult for you to do *anything* physical. If your Strength is 3, you should have a difficult time walking for long distances. Low Stamina might prevent you from getting restful sleep within the standard "8 hour" window. Maybe it takes you 12 hours or longer to recover enough to regain lost spells. Low Agility makes you more susceptible to falls and could possibly reduce your movement speed (this would be a house rule). Low Luck? You're the target of all the bad stuff that happens, whether it's a rock in your back while you try and sleep or an arrow trap that fires out at "random" targets.

- Patrons are not in a vacuum. They have enemies that are as or more powerful. If you're throwing around powers granted by the Moon Demon, you can guarantee that minions of the Sun God are going to hear about it and start tracking down the offender (and his or her associates) in order to get to the master. The PCs then become the "adventure" for the NPCs.

There are lot of ways to illuminate the challenges and downfalls of having the ability to warp the natural laws of the universe. It doesn't have to be "scaled" to levels or anything, but letting wizards run wild without consequences is completely against the spirit of DCC. It's a fun game, but it's not DCC/Appendix N.

Patrons are generally evil selfish godlike beings who create slaves/form alliances with mortals for the betterment of the evil Godlike being.

Not that they will never help but that help comes at a heavy price.

Loss of sanity,Loss of Soul,Loss of life,Loss of freedom are just some of the drawbacks of calling on your patron. The big thing is no matter what there is heavy loss.

You can take it to the bank that WHATEVER the patron does for the wizard,the patrons is going to get his back ten fold.

For instance if the Wizard calls on his patron for aid the Wizard (and his party) might just very well vanish (getting out of whatever trouble they were in)from the world and appear again in the depths of a Nasty Dungeon with the unrelenting goal of killing the Wizard(a servant who angered the patron) who created the dungeon burning in their minds.

The Wizard who called on the patron doesn't decide if help comes,what form it comes in or what the cost will be.He also doesn't get a chance to back out once he has called on the patron.

As far as the rest goes. Wizards do indeed have HUGE advantages in the game.Don't coddle the wizards! EVERY semi intelligent creature in your game world should be gunning for that wizard EVERY time he reveals himself.

KILL THE WIZARD! should be what EVERYONE is doing. Just like the Wizards that the pc's fight. WIZARDS DIE FIRST is a chant around our gaming table as soon as the initiative die is cast.

One good roll from a Goblin Wizard can take out my entire game group.We know that and behave accordingly. That Goblin Wizard gets a spell off means my group failed! Our number one goal in life is to get those casters DEAD!

If your Wizards life expectancy isn't a bad joke,you are holding their hands.

If you are running this game, go and read about magic in the Judge's Rules. Then use what you read up on. There should be areas where magic does not work as expected - either specific magics or all magic. If you are having a hard time figuring out to do this, take a look at these adventures:

Icons of the Blood Goddess in In the Prison of the Squid Sorcerer (Mystic Bull Games)The Revelation of Mulmo (Dragon's Hoard)The Falcate Idol (Purple Duck Games)

Magic comes with a price. Wizards should never be certain that their spells are going to work exactly as they hope, or that they will not have other affects or costs added on. That alone changes casting that spell from an obvious thing to do to an actual choice.

Even with the standard spell check, one out of every 20 spells should end in a natural "1" - misfire, patron taint, or corruption.

I hear you Hemlock. Wizards and Elves can absolutely dominate events even at low level if they have a strong position with their patrons.

My guess is that you are probably in a tough situation though, because I'll bet you've been playing without enforcing many of the suggestions above (or your players are coming up with some very creative ways around some of them) and suddenly changing the way things work in mid-campaign is quite honestly never fun or well received by anyone. So now that you have some great suggestions about how to keep their power in check in the future, the question may have become, how do you get there from here.

Maybe their patrons have simply had enough. There's no reason a Patron can't abandon a relationship with a character if it's no longer beneficial to them. Let the character call his patron next time and hear deafening silence in response, regardless of the dice roll. Talk about seeing fear in the eyes of a player! No better way to instill panic than to pull the rug out from under them when they've gotten used to a standard fall-back response every time things get tough. Or maybe the patron is not so nice about breaking his relationship. Perhaps the party may find themselves on a series of adventures where they seem to be getting set up for certain death, only to find out eventually that it's all the plan of one of the Patrons to get rid of the bothersome character for good. Or maybe the next series of adventures end with the characters providing some important artifact to the Patron. Once the Patron has what he's been after all along, he completely changes his tune when dealing with the wizard, and may even plague the character with a couple of taints to teach him a lesson in humility. If you really want to be an evil SOB, maybe BOTH Patrons want the artifact, and the characters have to make a choice between satisfying the demands of their patrons and killing a party member.

One final comment: don't hesitate to let the wizards die while this is going on. I don't mean rig a session so that they have no chance of survival, but if the party is waltzing through encounters, make them harder. Double the number of enemies. They crushed the last dragon they met with ease? Try making the next dragon two headed, have it summon a demon to fight by its side and give it a magic sword to fight with. And don't worry if a character gets eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, that's not your problem. It will be much easier to change the way you deal with spellcasters when they are new characters, rather than suddenly doing things differently with existing characters.

well, as Judge the way I play this is: the stronger is your position with a patron the bigger and deadliest are their plans for you. How was that Spiderman thing about power and responsibility? same thing, but nastier.

In my campaign the wizard (1st lvl) is a real loser (luck 4), all their mercurial effects are bad, he cast the magic missile with -4, so he uses to lose the spell at the first attempt to cast it, maybe the second time if he is lucky.The rest of their spells aren't better.But sometimes he saves the day, casting the right spell in the moment to save the whole group. By far the wizard isn't the most powerful PC in the group.

I have experienced too-powerful wizards in my campaign. I don't feel that the corruption mechanism sufficiently dissuades casters from slinging spells as often as they please, and I feel as though the extreme spell results (even for first level spells) are too powerful without exacting any commensurate cost. I eventually killed the most powerful wizard in the party with griffons, but I guess "frequently attack your party with griffons" isn't a solution that generalizes very well.

I was able to kill the wizard, and keep him dead, because we house-ruled that characters could go to negative hit points. We had a few drama-filled rounds in which the cleric and the paladin poured healing into the wizard but was unable to get him from -50 (or whatever) hit points back up to zero before the 1 round/level time limit ran out. Before I added the negative hit point rule I was scarcely able to kill any characters, mostly because the super-powerful wizard had a mercurial effect that healed everybody in a 20' radius every time he cast a 1st level spell.

I'm late to this party but I would spell duel. I recently just started using these rules and they show just how fragile a wizard is. Once you start a duel it only takes 1-3 rounds for someone to die. Even if the PC survives he should see the writing on the wall. If I keep dueling I will die sooner than later. Every time he cast a spell after that he is going to have to worry about being counter spelled and locked into a duel to the death.

_________________"When creating your character,choose an ethical system that can justify nearly any fit of temper, greed, cowardice, or vindictiveness, for example, Chaotic Violent..."

Also most people don't realize that a cleric can enter into a spell duel with a wizard. Have them raid a temple full of evil cleric willing to die for their god and you have several duels with multiple clerics against one wizard. If this doesn't slow the wizard down and make him think twice about casting spells every round then he will be rolling up a new character soon.

_________________"When creating your character,choose an ethical system that can justify nearly any fit of temper, greed, cowardice, or vindictiveness, for example, Chaotic Violent..."

SpellburnSpellburn is not fuelled by ability points.Instead, the amount of spellburn increases the natural fumble range (i.e. a spellcheck with 4 points of spellburn fumbles on a roll of 1-5 rather than on a 1 only). Hence, the maximum amount of spellburn is 18 (i.e. there is a fumble on 1-19 and a critical success on a 20).If the spellcaster fumbles while using spellburn he suffers the normal effects of a fumble and the additional effect of permanently losing one point of a randomly determined ability. If the spellcaster does not like the result of the random roll (e.g. Intelligence) he may sacrifice two points of his choice instead (e.g. a point of Strength and a point of Personality).

We've been playing like this for about 20 sessions. So far, the few wizard players were too afraid to use spellburn so maybe I've gone overboard. However, wizards have not been too weak at any point -- they're pulling their weight so I think the DCC Magic System works just fine without the spellburn option.

Spellburn-as-written is way overpowered in my opinion (and corruption and fumbles are not enough of a deterrent/tradeoff). The solutions suggested by most other posters are fine but not to my taste, as I don't like to intervene that much as a GM (i.e. I don't like to design encounters or new NPCs or patron personalities to specifically counter wizards).

Joined: Sun Sep 20, 2015 6:00 pmPosts: 28
FLGS: there are a few but I dont really consider any of them as my main flgs

A mysterious comet appears in the sky! suddenly every character's birth sign bonus gets revered, because I'm guessing your refferal to luck bonus means the wizards have the birth sign for spell casting and have a + modifier?

Maybe this comet drains the spellcasting rolls of all arcane magic by a significant ammount, maybe a -5 or -10 penalty on spell casting.

And as others have said, patrons should be demanding a great service from your player each time they help, and should deny helping them more than once without being paid back.

Maybe enemies start using poison darts with a poison that gives you a penalty to spell casting.

SpellburnSpellburn is not fuelled by ability points.Instead, the amount of spellburn increases the natural fumble range (i.e. a spellcheck with 4 points of spellburn fumbles on a roll of 1-5 rather than on a 1 only). Hence, the maximum amount of spellburn is 18 (i.e. there is a fumble on 1-19 and a critical success on a 20).

I like this.I've had a similar issue with Wizards. I tried introducing a specific injury/drawback table to go along with Spellburn but the player pushed back alot. I think this might be a better compromise. The added tension of rising fumble chances works great with the Cleric. Maybe a good mod is to make each incidence of Spellburn raise the Fumble chance by one, but also lower a stat of choice by the number chosen for the burn.

I also like the idea of ruling that a Patron can only be called on if they Quests have been satiated. However, my problem with the whole, "Have the Patron complicate the Wizards life" response is that this is sometimes hard to come up with and deal with from the Judges side, especially in the context of an adventure or campaign. I think a nice big random table of Patron quests is the solution. Everything from "Give 1000 gold coins to the Dancing Girls of Punjar" to "steal the Eye of the Argonaut from the Wizard Lekim Atetra".

In my group of 6 players two are wizards. Both are level 3 and their class seems to be the most powerful in game. Their spells own monsters with no other classes coming close to the wizards damage. I mean with the ability to use Luck, Spellburn, add their level and int modifiers they are getting 20+ easily to their attack roles...ever time! `Just saying, from my experience, that the wizards are the god class in DCC. Makes it hard to run an adventure with a high risk/reward ratio when they can nuke everything real fast.

Did any of you find the need to tone down the wizards in your game? If so, how?

Before I forget: The two in my group can call their patron more than once per game and often getting 30+ on their rolls! With this happing the adventure climax becomes far less challenging and to me and the other players...boring/upsetting

Are you generating your characters BTB or with a more generous system?

I ask becase a third level Wizard would typically have 10 hit points, many have less and spellburn and bleeding out reduces that still further; hardly a god class.

Also a typical character only has 31 1/2 points of physical & therefore burnable attributes and if you wish to keep a minimum of 3 that's 22/23 points and again if you generate PC's by the book most Wizards have less than this, usually under 20.

Also luck should be very difficult to recover; outside of godly intervention it's basically permanently lost so it's for emergency use only.

So to get 30 on a D20+3 (3rd level) with an average roll, and lets be generous and assume a +1 INT bonus and average Luck etc, you would need to spellburn 15 or 16 points just to give you a 50/50 chance of a 30+ for every spell you cast and you would be weaker than a toddler for a long time (8 days bed rest if you can afford a servant or 15/16 days kicking about the Inn if you can't). Also if you spell burn to 3 for example you now have an average of 4 hit points; ouch! or an armour class of 7, or enough strength to wield nothing more than a wooden spoon! or all three

If your players are getting 30+ every time I suspect you are generous with character creation, too free with replacement of luck and you are not threatening those 10 hit points effectively enough to keep the Wizards head down

A Wizard who has burnt to that degree should have a pending sense of his own doom and frequently he should be absolutely right to feel that way

Last edited by Weisenwolf on Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:45 am, edited 9 times in total.

So to get 30 on a D20+3 (3rd level) with an average roll and lets assume a +1 INT bonus and average Luck etc you would need to spellburn 15 or 16 points just to give you a 50/50 chance of a 30+ for every spell you cast and you would be weaker than a fish for a long time.

That's my experience here : a wizard can do ONE very big thing but becomes then a useless load.

So to get 30 on a D20+3 (3rd level) with an average roll and lets assume a +1 INT bonus and average Luck etc you would need to spellburn 15 or 16 points just to give you a 50/50 chance of a 30+ for every spell you cast and you would be weaker than a fish for a long time.

That's my experience here : a wizard can do ONE very big thing but becomes then a useless load.

Another common scenario is that classic D&D style adventure which culminates in a telegraphed/signposted battle with the big boss and a miraculously easy journey to safety with all those injuries and all that loot and then the world goes on pause while the party recover. DCC shouldn't work like that so the crippled Wizard is putting himself at risk spell burning like that and ought not be doing it unless the party has simply no choice.

In our games that Wizard would never have made 3rd level

Also in our campaign while your Wizard is recovering from spellburn the rest of the party may well be off on another adventure so you will be missing out on XP's too or, as the rest of the world isn't on pause until you recover, you may well be thrown into adventure in your frail state and have to deal with the consequences of deliberately making yourself a cripple for an entire adventure

So are Wizards powerful?

Yes they are, and so they should be, they toss magic about and magic is powerful you know, but are they too powerful?

No - Magic is far too dangerous and Wizards are far too physically frail to be considered too dangerous.

They are just dangerous; much like a 3rd level Warrior with metal armour, a two handed sword and an average of 22 hit points is dangerous

All DCC classes (except the Halfling ) are dangerous; that's one of it's greatest strengths

The math in our world is slightly different and I find it very educational to read the previous responses. Ours would be considered 3rd edition, perhaps, and we are 7-8 level.

Casters have plenty of spells. One of us is a druid who has an insane number of spells and natural abilities.

This is really the first time I have made consistent use of random monsters, though they are not really random anymore. As noted above, that kind of power attracts attention and so random monsters, nearby monsters are drawn to this vortex of energy.

Equally, I do what I can to reduce opportunities for the party to rest and regain spent spells. A super positive benefit from this is (usually) an exciting story line.

Luck is only a shrinking resource if the GM is not handing it out as a reward at the end of an adventure along with XP.

True, that's not meant to exactly restore what was spent, but then you might get that reward in a session where you didn't spend any... Over the long-haul, it should more-or-less remain viable as a resource.

Well, the other half of it, a wizard at my table rolled hot on her mercurial magic and rolls a 1d30 for magic missiles. She's gotten a couple of nat 30s, so, int +1, level 1, there's a 32 right there. Brings her average spell check for magic missile to 17.5. That's just my experience. Someone else who rolls just as lucky, but rolls luckier during roll up, +2 int or even luck to spell checks, or both, could potentially be rolling 1d30+4 or 1d30+5 for a certain spell at level 1, a potential average spell check of 20 total. Would even be more obnoxious if that same wizard ran something like Court of Chaos, betrayed the party and got that +6 staff it offers. Granted, these are all possibilities, stars must align, ect.

Re: Luck, not diminishing if your halfling is buffing your wizard. Though, that's the power of working together.

Hmmm yes well Wizards are indeed MUCH more powerful than "normal" but fragile. I like to emphasise this when I can.

So far I have the two Mages in my current party worried that if they over expose their power some nameless foe will target them in their sleep.. LOL Power of suggestion is a wonderful thing. However thats very situational I realise. In a straight up fight yeah a super charged Magic Missile will blow massive holes in many critters

Reading the thread gives me an idea to see what happens if we "swamp" the team (7 Pc's) with loadsa little guys maybe skeletons or rats or similar low HD critters. Using Magic Missile on a rat is not gonna happen too often unless they get desperate methinks. On the other hand I can see ANY Melee competent character dropping one of these each round no problems. If I give it a go I'll do a write up - might be fun

_________________{Standard Disclaimer}If it was mentioned already and I missed it, please put this down to my advanced age and senility rather than discourtesy!My DCC games work site is here https://tinyurl.com/y8ymm7or Use my forum name here as the Password

Wizards at my table spam Enlarge on 2-3 of the party's melee types every fight now. Debating on setting them against a rival caster with the same spell, mage hunters of some kind, or just a gargantuan creature... or all 3!Mwahahaha... :twisted::mrgreen:

Wilderness Survivor+1, Force of Will burn d2Darag DEAD laid down her life for the honor of her pack... Kolo DEAD struck down battling that which is an abomination in the eyes of the Masters...Moarbanez DEAD -died gloriously cleft in twain by a glaive...

Wizards at my table spam Enlarge on 2-3 of the party's melee types every fight now. Debating on setting them against a rival caster with the same spell, mage hunters of some kind, or just a gargantuan creature... or all 3!Mwahahaha... :twisted::mrgreen:

LOL! How about low tech it friend and drop them into a 5x5x5 room filled with poisonous centipedes.... OR have the floors ready to collapse if something bigger than man size stands on it....

_________________{Standard Disclaimer}If it was mentioned already and I missed it, please put this down to my advanced age and senility rather than discourtesy!My DCC games work site is here https://tinyurl.com/y8ymm7or Use my forum name here as the Password

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